Warren was born on the farm, south of Pembina, Oct. 20,
1916. Dr. Harris of Pembina was the attending physician. Warren doesn't
remember much before he started school at McArthur. In the spring of 1922,
the school employed two teachers but in the fall, there was only one, Florence
Henderson. There were five Dietrich children, Bushes, Decks, Warners, Fontaines,
and Warren's cousin, Percy Oakes. The Fontaines lived on the Short farm
just south of the home place. For a little while, Warren rode to school
with the Fontaines, in their team and buggy in the spring and fall, and
in their sleigh in winter. After a year or two, Warren's father bought a
driving horse, which he and his brother Milfred drove to school. The horse
was well-trained enough to be sent home because the boys were too small
to unhitch it. On one occasion, Mr. Barron, who lived down the road, caught
the horse and brought it back to school, thinking that it had run away.
On one trip, the boys discovered that there was something wrong with their
horse. They unhitched him, led him across the bridge at the muddy spring
- and it lay down and died. Later, when the teacher, Kathryn Grube, was
boarding at the Hart home, another horse died on the way home from school.

When Warren went to High School in Pembina, he would drive
back and fort to high school in the family's Model A Ford, except in the
dead of winter, when he boarded in town, one year at the Percy Kneeshaw
home, and three winters with his Aunt Effie (Mrs. John Hart).

After high school, Warren enrolled at the Agriculture College
in Crookston, Minnesota, but took sick after a couple of months and went
back to the farm. In 1939, a motor-maintenance school offered in Pembina,
with Bill Barron as the instructor. Warren enrolled in this course, as well
as a basic electrical course.

In May of 1941, Warren was drafted and sent to Fort Snelling,
Minnesota and to Fort Leonard Wood, in Missouri, where he received basis
training. The army then sent him to motor maintenance training at Ft. Benning,
Georgia. Bill Barron would later maintain that his motor-maintenance course
helped Warren in the service. Warren was at Ft. Benning for four months
before he was assigned to the Twentieth Infantry, Sixth Division, in an
anti-tank company. His outfit trained cadre to set up new camps to take
in trainees. Two years later he was transferred to San Luis Obispo (1943),
California to the coastal defense, where he took amphibious training. He
then went to Oahu, Hawaii for more amphibious training and participated
in island defense. After that he went to New Guinea, where he saw his first
combat. He landed on severl islands. He had a APO number and his letters
were censored, so nobody at home knew his whereabouts. Warren didn't even
know his whereabouts, and had to ask the natives where he was. Today, he
says, it is different. The news media follow the military around and the
enemy knows everything, even to the types of guns the soldiers use. Warren
didn't really know where he was when he landed on Luzon and the Laete Gulf.
Some of the young kids there could speak English, and told the soldiers
where they were. At the time, he says, he never really appreciated where
he was or what he had to do. "It was either you or them!" he adds.
Warren rose to the rank of sergeant and was discharged as a T-4 technician.
Warren was discharged 25 November, 1945 at Ft. Lewis, Washington.

After his discharge, he returned to the farm and a different
way of life. He had been in a malaria infested area all the tiime he was
overseas, and had to take sulfa tablets for four months after he was discharged.
Some of the fellas who didn't take the pill got malaria in the jungle, and
died of the fever. it was a "different ballgame" after WW2 after
Vietnam. Everybody, after the World War appreciated what the military had
done.

Warren has been drafted in May in 1941, and was supposed
to serve for a year, but after the "Japs" struck Pearl Harbor,
that was all off, and he was in for the duration.

In 1946, Warren met Betty Peabody, Myrtle's sister (Milfred's
wife). Betty worked for the telephone company in Grand Forks, and spent
her holidays on the farm. They were married July 4, 1948 at the Presbyterian
parsonage in East Grand Forks. Betty's folks, Myrtle and Milfred, and the
preacher and his wife attended. The couple hid Warren's pickup behind the
Catholic Church, where Louis and Harris (Betty's brothers) would never think
to look. They honeymooned in Bemidji before settling on the farm. They lived
there in a little trailer, and in the winter they had an apartment on the
second floor of Warren's parent's house. In the falll of 1949, they built
a three room house on the farm, where they lived until 1960, when they moved
to farmhouse to live with Warren's father after his mother went to live
in the home at Hallock, Minnesota.

Warren continued to farm with his brother, Milfred, until
1979, when he retired. Warren and Betty continued to live on the farm until
January of 1992, when they moved to a condominium in Grand Forks. On Oct.
30, 1993, Betty suffered a stroke, from which she never recovered. In 2000,
Warren and Betty moved to Cavalier, N.D.

As of this writing, Warren lives in an apartment next to
the home where Betty resides.